Recently, communication networks have penetrated more and more in every day life and are adopted by subscribers for more and more services such as phone calls, data transmission and the like. Also, so-called value added services are implemented using communication networks.
With the increasing number of possible services available for subscription in communication networks, also new network types and/or subnetworks are emerging, while interoperability therebetween is still given.
In view of this variety of services to be subscribed and different networks/subnetworks used by subscribers when using their terminals, network operators are facing challenges in implementing new value added services based on messaging applications over e.g. GPRS (General Packet Radio Services).
With the increasing variety of services and the different qualities of services a subscriber can subscribe to, charging and/or billing for services offered by the network and used by the subscriber becomes rather complex.
Therefore, in this connection a new type of mediation functionality for charging is needed, which is capable of coping with additional requirements related to managing prepaid challenges, controlling charging logic based on context and processing capabilities of collected charging information.